About bankshot sports organization

The Bankshot Sports Organization offers many different family sports, which are non-aggressive by design, including: Bankshot Basketball, Bankshot Tennis, Bankshot Pitch and Throw, and Bankshot Soccer.

Bankshot Sports are family sports because players do not play against one another but along-side one another. Bankshot Sports are non-running and non-exclusionary accommodating wheelchair players, the physically and cognitively challenged, grandparents, children and everyone else at the same time. These sports are called "Total -Mix Sports based on Universal Design"

An important and novel aspect about Bankshot is its educational merit. The game offers an enriched play environment composed of a series of novel sport challenges that invigorate the brain with mind-nurturing play experiences. Bankshot's design is also intended to stimulate motor coordination in a dynamic kid-friendly, inclusionary game. Because of Bankshot's spatial relationships, particularly in geometrical composition and court design, the Bankshot court is part of a new genre in the art/play/think world of wonder. It combines creative and scientific elements to produce and advanced participatory art form for today's young person. Bankshot is pure physics: an exercise in translating science into action. (Florida Park & Recreation Quarterly)

The two Basketball Sports that are universally played were invented by clergy: a minister and a rabbi. What gives? James Naismith brought into being the fast-moving, up-and- down running game we simply call Basketball. The rabbi did minister one better. He reinvented basketball as would a rabbi. With the sense of justice and fair play. His invention Bankshot Basketball, some 90 years later, is so rabbinical. And with Bankshot Basketball, the Rabbi, Reeve Brenner, re-defined the game: Same goals, same balls – but what he did with the boards you can’t imagine. Bankshot Basketball is also played around the world from Korea, Kuwait, from Japan to Israel and a couple of hundred courts around the USA.

What he did was eliminate speed, size, strength, stature and gender from the equation. He did not remove competition. But you take on the court, not your opponent. To play well you need brains as well as skill. You play alongside, not against. Remember the game horse? Talk about a variation of a theme. Bankshot Basketball is a game of pure shooting skill. Trick shooting as in billiards contrasted with pool. In a recent national tournament, a wheelchair player won first prize. Dr. James Naismith was a Protestant minister and a sports nut among his many credentials. The good rabbi Dr. Reeve Brenner is also multi-credentialed – his books are required reading in graduate schools, departments of philosophy and sociology. He also served until retirement as the Jewish Chaplain at the NIH. He too, very into sports and an excellent athlete. Sports Illustrated, in a story about him, dubbed him the Rabbi of Roundball in a feature article.

How did all of this come about? A Rabbi’s sense of justice and fair play already mentioned may be the right answer. And an injured cousin in a wheelchair. Naismith’s idea was athleticism. The Rabbi’s purpose was inclusion. Running, jumping and stamina make any sport aggressive and exclusionary. Sport comes from Sparta -combat. By contrast, Bankshot requires that players play alongside one other, not against one another. At Bankshot you play the course, not each other. The Rabbi also established the National Association for Recreational Equality (NARE). He calls this association, which educates for inclusion in sports and recreation, his torah because it is a teaching of theory. The Inclusive sports he invents he calls his mitzvah the act fulfilling the torah.

It’s also interesting that there exists a basketball museum. There is now a Bankshot Basketball Museum. In fact, several art museums exhibit Bankshot Bankboards as sports-sculpture. The Boston Children’s Museum has built a permanent Bankshot Basketball pavilion displaying Bankshot Basketball. For more please check out NARE's website: http://nareletsplayfair.org

Bankshot Sports take up about one half a tennis court in size, accommodating as many as 80-100 children, teachers and families at one time in an hour's time offer all of the familiar sports skills. The objective is to eliminate features of sports that tend to separate people, such as offense/defense/ strength, stamina, speed and gender. Bankshot Sports are based upon skill, practice and intelligence. These are games which sharpen the mind and provide the challenge of intellectual stimulation.

Bankshot Bankboards have been displayed in two international Art museums, the Museum of Modern Art (New York) Design Department and the Israel National Museum in Jerusalem, as Sports/Structures. The Boston Children's Museum has built a permanent pavilion exhibiting Bankshot Bankboard as sport sculptures.

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The fact that Rabbi Dr. Reeve R. Brenner served as the Jewish chaplain of the National Institutes of Health, in no way suggests an endorsement by the NIH of the information or materials on this website. Dr. Brenner’s poetry, articles and books are not associated with the NIH nor are they approved or disapproved, endorsed or supported by the NIH in any way.